Studying the influence of external factors on the environmental controls of the Mary Rose Museum

Creating stable environments around museum objects is crucial to ensuring their survival. With large objects, such as the Mary Rose, a Tudor warship raised from seabed in 1982, running the environmental
control systems required to maintain such an environment is both complex and costly. Understanding which factors have the greatest impact on the museum’s environment, and energy use is important for ensuring
the ongoing financial and environmental sustainability of the Mary Rose Trust. We investigate data provided by the museum about its building management system during 2024. We seek to explain which external
factors, or subsystems had the greatest impact on the museum’s energy use. We also present a brief review of pre-existing physics-based models for the effect of environmental conditions on the degradation of
artifacts in museums.